The 21st New York Jewish Film Festival (January 11 - 26, 2012)

A musical documentary that uniquely tells the history of Jewish culture in Poland. It highlights the current resurgence of Jewish culture through the personal reflections and musical selections of a group of cantors and acclaimed composer Charles Fox ("Killing Me Softly", "I Got A Name" and many more) who made an important historical mission to the birthplace of Cantorial music. The documentary will give generations the opportunity to learn about and re-embrace the Jewish culture that produced one of the most artistic and educated societies that once flourished in Europe. Above all, the film celebrates the resilience and the power of Jewish life, while telling the story of two peoples who shared intertwined cultures.

Everything is complicated in Yoni's life. He's almost 13, real gifted, but physically undeveloped and struggles daily to grow up before his threatening up-coming Bar Mitzva.

A Polish man rescues a Jewish woman during the chaos of WWII, but they become separated until a chance encounter over 30 years later in New York reunites them.

A drama about a family's effort to save their antique restoration business.

In 1984, the Beta Israel, a secluded 2,500-year-old community of observant Jews in the northern Ethiopian mountains, fled a dictatorship and began a secret and dangerous journey of escape. Co-director Avishai Mekonen, then a 10-year-old boy, was among them. 400 MILES TO FREEDOM follows his story as he breaks the 20 year silence around the brutal kidnapping he endured as a child in Sudan during his community's exodus out of Africa, and in so doing explores issues of immigration and racial diversity in Judaism.

Tal is 17 years old. Naim is 20. She's Israeli. He's Palestinian. She lives in Jerusalem. He lives in Gaza. They were born in a land of scorched earth, where fathers bury their children. They must endure an explosive situation that is not of their choosing at an age where young people are falling in love and taking their place in adult life. A bottle thrown in the sea and a correspondence by email nurture the slender hope that their relationship might give them the strength to confront this harsh reality to grapple with it, and thereby ever so slightly change it. Only 60 miles separate them but how many bombings, check-points, sleepless nights and bloodstained days stand between them?

Arnaud nicknamed "Cui Cui" no longer knows which way to look. He is about to marry Anna but he is not sure he really loves her. To make matters worse, he falls in love during the stag party he has with his friends. And Léa, a nightclub singer, is obviously the woman of his dreams. What to do? Cancel the wedding and create a scandal but be able to live with a woman he loves truly and loves him in return? Or be a good boy and not disappoint the company but say farewell to happiness. For four days, Arnaud goes to and fro aimlessly between Anna and Léa, between his eccentric sister and his self-centered mother, between hope and depression.

Thinking he has killed his friend Paul Zeidman in a jealous rage, David Bergman flees his native Russia; becomes a successful lawyer in New York; and loses touch with his penniless family, who have followed him to America. At his wedding to Rose, which takes place in a home for the aged to which they have contributed, David recognizes Paul among the musicians; and when the Bergmans, who live in the home, hear Paul's rendition of Eili, Eili all are reunited.

18th century Poland sees a new messiah arriving from Turkey. He promises eternal life on earth to those who join him. 25 years later he's in Vienna. 2 men, each of them on his own and driven by different reasons, try to solve his secret.

In Deaf Jam, a Deaf New York City teen is introduced to sign language poetry and boldly enters the spoken word slam scene.

New York's fashion district - otherwise known as the Garment Center - has always held sway over the imaginations of the style-conscious and those seeking glamour. This little slice of Manhattan has nurtured the likes of retailers and designers - from Hattie Carnegie to Donna Karan - in their quest to create world-class fashions that have made generations of Americans feel and look stylish. It has also provided employment for countless metropolitan area residents and it continues to draw visitors from around the world - many of whom come to study at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology. Dressing America will tell a quintessentially American story.

Caught in the space between childhood and adulthood, a girl at her father's second wedding tries to cope with the increasing gap between the intimacy she craves and the distance she feels.

The story of Yonatan Netanyahu, commander of an elite Israeli army commando unit who was killed during Operation Entebbe, a hostage-rescue mission carried out at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976, after members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the German Revolutionary Cells hijacked an Air France plane with 248 passengers aboard.

He drew sketches on tiny pieces of paper and sent them, from the WW1 trenches, to a young cellist, who was waiting for him in Berlin. She thought he was a genius and helped him become the busiest architect in Germany. When the Nazis came to power, Erich and Louise Mendelsohn escaped Germany forever. The buildings which Erich built, scattered as a trail of their journey, have changed the history of architecture. INCESSANT VISIONS is a cinematic meditation about the untold story of Erich Mendelsohn, whose life and career were as enigmatic and tragic as the path of the century.

It's inspiring true story about two thirteen year old girls who were, on the eve of World War II, great dancing and acting stars in Zagreb. Selling out theater venues, they weer praised in the most superb headlines by the Croatian and European press. They were filmed by Parisian 'Pathe' and Berlin's UFA... During the Nazi persecution of Jews and later German nationals' flight from communists, a dramatic friendship was born through entertainment, dance, but also anxiety. This led towards an unexpected end.

A mother's struggle to come to terms with her daughter's strange behavior.

City of Lodz in Poland, after the Second World War. Two brothers, Tadek and Andrzej, grow up without a father, and their mother, so busy at work, does not notice when the boys join a rowdy and anti-Semitic organization.Only when during a fight one of the boys gets hurt, she realizes what is going on. Then she decides to leave Poland together with her family and go to... Australia. At the end of the trip it comes out that the goal was not to reach Australia but Israel. Boys become aware of their and their family roots.

Two filmmakers, father and son, reconnect across time, space and the ruins of the Soviet epoch.

The story of a brave Catholic priest who saved a Jewish mother and her two daughters during the Holocaust in Belgrade. This 18-minute multimedia film, comprised of 90 old family photographs, takes us inside the doomed world of the Balkan Sephardic Jews.

Ricardo is a brilliant singer struggling for success in Venice. He gets a contract in a recording house and his voice becomes famous, but his short stature makes performances still elusive. When he meets Nina he makes her briefly believe his tall and handsome friend Rico is the singer. English version of the original German release the previous year also played by tenor Joseph Schmidt, one of his few pictures..

Poignant meditation on family, loss, and the mental maps of homelessness. The film navigates the intimate lives of 5 brothers and their mother, over the course of a decade, through the pains of exile and the joys of family bonding. Exploring the politics of belonging, displacement, and homosexuality, the film examines the hard decisions one Israeli family has to make and the intractable bonds that unite them in the face of complicated life choices.

Can one be a Catholic priest and an observant Jew at the same time?

Kutsher's Country Club is the last surviving Jewish resort in the Catskills. One of the legendary Borscht Belt hotels during its heyday, Kutsher's has been family-owned and operated for over 100 years. Exploring the full Dirty Dancing-era Catskills experience-- and how it changed American pop culture in the comedy, sports and vacation industries-- this documentary captures a last glimpse of a lost world as it disappears before our eyes.

WHITE: A MEMOIR IN COLOR is a personal memoir film about what it means to be white in America. It tells an emotional multi-generational story about my (white) family that encompasses immigration, assimilation, liberal idealism, bitter disillusionment, and ultimately reconciliation and an adoption that makes our family multi-racial.

Letters Home is a three channel video created around the text of letters Freda Birnholz (the great-aunt of director Melissa Hacker) wrote to her family in New York as she traveled through Germany and Austria in 1945 as a member of the American Army's Women's Army Corps. This was not the first time Freda had been to Europe; she was born in Austria and left in 1925 to start a new life in America. And the relatives she wrote to in New York had not lived there long. Jewish refugees, they had fled Austria in 1939 and were the surviving remnants of a large family. As Freda journeys back to the sites of her youth, she sifts through and reports on the destruction she sees around her, and the details she learns of the destruction of her family. The triptych of images is a visual representation of her state of mind, torn between searching for remnants of her past, locating herself in the unsettled present, and longing for a secure future. As she travels through Europe in the immediate aftermath of WWII she travels through the sites of a world that no longer exists, searching for people, objects, and messages left behind, and struggles with how to communicate what she finds to her family in New York.